A silicon wafer that has undergone various steps of etching and/or deposition of conductive, semiconductor or insulation layers is put through a sorting step intended to remove defective circuits. The sorting step is followed by a packaging or encapsulation step.
During the sorting step, each circuit on a wafer is tested to check its conformance,to specifications. A circuit can be considered satisfactory, rejected, or alternatively, a candidate for adjustment. Adjustment is performed by imposing given electrical voltages and/or currents on terminals of the integrated circuit. Some of these terminals may no longer be accessible once the circuit is encapsulated.